Welcome to the Royal Caribbean Blog podcast, a week of look into the world of Royal Caribbean cruising.

I'm your host, Matt Hodgeberg, and this is episode number 337.

If you've listened to a few of these podcast episodes, then you probably heard me talk about a Royal Caribbean blog group cruise,

and you might be wondering what the heck a group cruise is all about.

This week, I wanted to focus on why going on a Royal Caribbean

cruise with friends you haven't met yet is a great idea and something that should be at the top

of your must-do list. Here we go. I get a lot of emails at Royal Caribbean Blog Podcasts with

a lot of different questions, but this week's episode is dedicated to one particular email because I thought it was a really important topic to talk about.

It comes from Andrea and Jerry Viola.

And they wrote to me, hi, Matt, we've been following your wonderful blog for the last two years.

We have already made reservations with MEI travel to be part of the October 2020 Royal Caribbean

Blog Group Cruise on Burlington of the Seas.

This is our first group cruise.

We can't wait to meet you and the blog members.

We have friends who would like to join us.

Is it possible for you to do a podcast just about what a group cruise is all about?

I think many of your listeners would be very interested.

And I thought, my goodness, Andrea and Jerry are totally right

because we have done episodes talking about group cruises, but never actually broached the topic

more generically and about what it's all about in more of a, again, a generic standpoint. So to

help me talk about what group cruises are all about is the secret sauce to any good group cruise. It is one of my

very, very good friends, supporters, and of course, the operations manager for MEI travel, Annette

...